


Reconstruction Site

by Velasa



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/F, Post ME3, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-11-17 20:41:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18106085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velasa/pseuds/Velasa
Summary: In the recovery after the war, Aria and Nyreen have learned to live together again.





	Reconstruction Site

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ivy_Adair](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivy_Adair/gifts).



> I want to thank AceQueenKing and BardofHeartDrive for their incredible amounts of help and encouragement in helping me with this! I've been struggling a lot with my writing for a few years now and this wouldn't have gotten out of the outline stage without them.

Omega was a better off mess than most of the rest of the galaxy a year after the end of the Reaper War, but cleaning the place up was more than enough to keep Aria living in her office for the foreseeable future. There were consultations, calls, bills, threatening contractors who hadn't gotten the message and tried to cheat her, the occasional hit job on someone who'd pushed her too far, more paperwork than she'd ever dealt with in her last century... it was maddening but the alternative was being dead. She'd take the paperwork.

Not that rebuilding needed to be this hard. This could be easier. Faster. Even with only the secondary relays operating they could cut deals for favors and control of a rat's nest of cheap neighborhoods that may not last more than a few decades but would look functional enough to pull in rent for their slumlords. But unfortunately a promise had been made, and goddess help her she was actually keeping this one.

 _Why_ sat across the room on the couch going through strengthening exercises for an arm that was never going to work properly again but with time could be able to perform simple tasks like holding a cane. Nyreen would walk with a limp for the rest of her life and have a physical therapy routine for years but she was alive. It had been her insistence that the remade Omega be habitable in the future, not just right now, and that there be services and a way for people to live decent lives. It had been a fight, but they had been through worse.

Access to proper medical care and supplies had been impossible in the last weeks of the Reaper War. Nyreen had been gravely wounded in the coup and Aria had at first redirected all incoming medical supplies to her care. When Nyreen found out she was furious- she threatened to hobble her way to the front lines if Omega's people were left to suffer for her sake alone. Trying to call her bluff had just resulted in finding her on the floor by the door with burst stitches and a blue bloom of blood on her bandages. They'd nearly broken up in the ensuing fight but Nyreen's will was steel and Aria's had been shaken by how close the woman she loved had come to death. If she used everything to save Nyreen she would find a way to die for the civilians she'd been defending for years. Aria folded. Supplies went out to the general public, and Nyreen's injuries never healed quite right for the rationing of it.

They had come to an agreement: water and air quality would be maintained for everyone, public health clinics and food banks existed in every district, and extranet based education programs were now freely available station-wide. It left room for the two of them to come to a balance on their personal lives that had never existed before.

Aria hadn't realized how unhappy Nyreen had been before until she saw how much she was laughing now. When they'd first been together and Nyreen was working as her enforcer there had been good times, and she remembered Nyreen smiling when they were alone but she had never laughed like this: like she was comfortable with the place she was in and the person she was. Aria had always just assumed the stiffness was part of her personality....

She looked up from another requisitions request for cement additives to watch Nyreen curling her crippled arm up to shoulder height with some kind of flexible band, counting _thirteen fourteen fifteen._ After _twenty-nine thirty_ Nyreen looked up with amusement in the flick of her mandibles and asked a wry "Do you have a question or are you just planning on watching?"

Not willing to look embarrassed Aria said the first thing that came to mind. "You do know you're going to be half dead by the time all of this is done, don't you?" With a gesture at the datapads to indicate it was about the rebuilding effort.

"So?"

"So you're barely going to be able to enjoy any of them. Why are you bothering?"

"That's not important." Nyreen answered in a tone Aria imagined might be used while trying to explain something to a child. The last year of practice kept her from getting her hackles up about it- no one else could get away with teasing her like that. Aria only huffed in annoyance and looked at her  
with a scowl.

The silence lasted long enough for Nyreen to finish a second set of band exercises with the arm. Then she set it down and limped over to stand beside Aria at the desk. Aria said nothing about it, but moved her jacket out of the way so that Nyreen could get a better grip on the back of the chair to support herself.

"You really don't understand do you." Nyreen said softly, not actually surprised by it at all. They'd known each other too long to be surprised anymore. "But you're doing it anyway."

"Yes. It's not like you gave me a choice." Aria answered with less annoyance than she wanted. She wasn't mad about it anymore. The alternative had been saving the galaxy only to lose her again and that wasn't an option.

And there it was, Nyreen's laugh. "I really didn't." _But you still love me anyway_ in the rumble of her subvocals.

Aria gave an overdramatic sigh and feigned going back to her files but when Nyreen leaned into her shoulder she leaned back. Now with things slowly improving all around them there was a comfort to their interactions that had never existed before. It... was not a feeling Aria had been used to in her relationships or her life before. It hadn't even been in their previous relationship. But a lot had changed since then. "It seems the apocalypse has that kind of an effect on people." Aria said at last. "Now sit down before you hurt yourself, your knees are shaking."

With ease Aria lifted the taller woman onto her lap and received another small and precious peal of laughter in return. "My hero." Nyreen teased as she folded her arms over Aria's shoulders and leaned in to touch their foreheads. Aria pressed back and couldn't help but smile.

  
End  
3/13/2019 3:39 AM


End file.
